Today I have a little announcement about a competition in which I will be participating from this point on. It’s all about the Young Storyteller Award, in which authors up to 35 years of age have the opportunity to participate with a self-written book until 15 August. The whole thing is organised (with the support of the bookstore Thalia and the Austrian newspaper Der Standard) by the website story.one – a platform where anyone can publish their own texts of up to 2,500 characters and compile them into books. The texts can also be liked and commented on by other people from the community. You can now view my contributions to participation in the YSA22 online and feel free to comment and/or forward them.
My book concept – Die Geschwister M (english: “The M. siblings”)
Which texts the participants write in their 12 to 17 stories for the book is completely free in terms of genre – only the character length counts. On Instagram and Facebook last week, I already gave a clue as to the direction my contribution would take. I have written 15 stories – in the style of the Greek philosopher Theophrastus – which are about the portrayal of character traits in humans and caricature them. The first two stories “Die Beistehende” and “Der Arschkriechende” are already online. The other stories will follow in the next few days before the book is compiled.
It was an exciting challenge for me to develop a concept in a relatively short time and to write connected, very short stories that nevertheless have as much diversity as possible. I hope I have succeeded in this.
A note on the upcoming book
I think the concept of story.one is generally very powerful. I like the fact that newcomers and hobby authors can publish their own book of stories quickly and easily. For example, I have found writers who just wanted to put short stories online in the first place and have now created great books out of them. However, I think the price of 14.50 € for a quite thin booklet is rather high – especially as the authors are limited in their freedom of design and have to pay for additional features (like their own cover image for 35 €, etc.). This is much cheaper with other self-publishing services. Nevertheless, I’m taking part in the Young Storyteller Award 2022 and I’m curious what you think of my work!
The stories I have published so far for the competition (in German) can be found under this link.
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